Apollo and Starbuck from A to Z, Pt 2
by roofietoof
Summary: A second set of unrelated and unconnected scenes from the lives of our favorite pair of frakkedup pilots.


**A/N: Completely unrelated and unconnected, there is no one storyline.**

**Warning: A lot of these are heavy on the angst, 'cause that's what they've been giving us lately and that's what I've been feeling.**

**Amends**

"Private quarters?" Lee repeated questioningly, looking down at her request. He snorted with derision. "You con Anders into giving you another chance?"

Kara closed her eyes. "Her name's Kacey, and she's two years old. She was my—." She paused and bit her lip. "I got to know her on New Caprica."

Lee's face contorted in confusion, looking at her standing humbly before him, but his anger overwhelmed any sympathy he felt at seeing her tortured stance. He threw the paper down and sat in his chair. "We don't have space for everyone that wants a private room."

Kara lowered her head and reached out to trace the edge of his desk. "Her mother died yesterday, Lee. She got some sort of infection on the surface, but didn't know she was sick until it was too late." She looked up at him. "That's where I've been for the last three days: in sickbay, watching her die. Just in case you were wondering."

He looked away from her.

"Kacey doesn't have anybody now." Kara's eyes moistened. "And neither do I."

He stood up. "So what? What, Kara?" His hand clenched in a fist. "You thought you'd play Mommy to this little girl that you hardly know?"

It was her turn to look away, but she nodded in the affirmative.

He could barely get the words out. "Why would you want to do that?"

"I don't think you really want to know." She answered, shaking her head.

He placed his hands on his desk. "Yes." He seethed. "I think I really do."

She took a deep breath and met his glare head on. "To make amends." Her lip quivered. "To make up for the child I lost."

He slammed a hand down on his desk. "You mean the child you threw away!"

"Fine." Her eyes shut once again at hearing his scream. "To make up for the child I _threw away_."

He had to turn his back on her as he whispered. "There's no possible way for you to make up for that."

She continued on without hesitation. "To make up for _our_ child, who you thought I got rid of because it would've been _yours_." Her tears fell on her request form and she wiped her cheek. "But who I actually got rid of because it would've been _mine_."

"Stop." He pleaded, still not looking at her. "We don't talk about that. Not ever."

She looked at the back of his head as he struggled not to punch a hole in the wall. "Our child deserved to have someone love it, take care of it. And it didn't get that because I was a terrified, selfish coward."

He finally turned around at her admission.

She nodded and stood up straight. "I know there's nothing I can do to make up for what I did to you, what I did to that baby." She scratched the bridge of her nose. "But Kacey deserves to be loved and taken care of too. And that _is_ something I can do."

He still didn't look at her, just grabbed the pen and signed his name on the tear-splashed form. He handed it to her. "It's just a closet on the C corridor, but I'll have some beds moved in."

**Break**

"Do you think he's dead?" Dee asked, trembling as she stood around a tactical table in CIC with Starbuck, Helo and the Admiral.

"I'm afraid that is the most likely scenario." The marine answered reluctantly.

The Admiral lowered his head and Dee began to cry.

Helo glanced over to check on Starbuck, who had not spoken or shown any sign of emotion throughout the whole briefing. "But you don't know for sure?" He asked.

"No, we don't. We don't know anything for sure in a situation like this." The marine answered, looking at the Major's sobbing wife. "But the conditions are extremely harsh, and his oxygen would have run out by now, so it's highly doubtful he's still alive. There is only a small window of opportunity in which a successful rescue is possible, and unfortunately, that window has closed."

Starbuck knocked a model Viper off the table and marched to the hatch.

Helo shouted after her. "Starbuck! Where do you think you're going?"

"To break the frakking window!" She shouted back.

**Consensus**

He had to get away from the party.

It was sweet of everyone to do it for them, and it was a good party; the music was humming and the ambrosia was flowing, but he couldn't seem to stop looking around for the one person he knew was never going to show up to celebrate.

He kissed his wife and apologized, claiming that he had to duck out for a few minutes. He made his way to the quiet solitude of his office, but when he opened the door, he found that even though it was quiet, he wouldn't be alone.

She sat at his desk, sipping on a glass of ambrosia.

"Hey." He said softly, closing the door behind him.

She looked up at him and smiled what he had come to recognize as his favorite of her smiles. Not the cocky Starbuck grin, but the slight, gentle smirk that let him know she was glad to see him. "Hey." She replied.

He pointed to the familiar, festive glass that she put down on the desk. "Funny. I don't remember seeing you at the party."

"Helo snuck me out some treats." She chuckled softly. "Just because I'm not at the party, that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to partake in the celebration of this joyous day." She lowered her head, exhausted from the effort it took to say the words without sounding insincere. She tapped her fork against the empty plate in front of her. "I just had a piece of somewhat edible cake, so I'm about as jubilant as I can get."

He walked to the desk, standing right in front of her. "You could come, you know." He assured her. "There's no reason that you should feel you have to stay away."

She stood up and shook her head. "No, no, Lee. There are just—there are just some places I shouldn't be."

He glanced at the plate. "Do you want me to bring you anything else?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to bed soon anyway."

"Sure." He gulped at the mental image of her curled up in her bunk. "You must be tired."

They were silent for more than a few moments before one of them broke the tension.

"So, two years together, huh? That's pretty impressive, and more than I could ever manage to pull off." She winked and smiled brightly. "You've done well for yourself, Major Adama. You've got a good life, a good wife. You seem…..well, you seem happy, Lee." She bit her lip. "It's nice to see you that way."

He nodded. "Yeah, things are good."

"Well, congratulations. Really, I mean it." She stepped out from behind the desk and began to make her way to the door. "I'm gonna call it a night."

He was forced to either say it, or let her walk out. And he'd let her walk away too many times before. So he said it.

"As good as things are, I'd give it up in a heartbeat." He paused to find the courage to finish the thought. "If you were to ever come to me and tell me……"

He stopped talking when she froze near the door and looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

He turned to her fully and glimpsed the doubt on her face. "But you still don't believe that, do you?"

She shook her head. "No, I _do_. I believe that you would." She whispered in a raspy voice. "Which is why I stay away from things like your wedding anniversary celebration."

He watched her fuss with a piece of hair that was always in her eyes now since she had decided to let it grow long again, and he resisted the urge to gently tuck it behind her ear for her.

She refused to meet his eyes, and he could see that she was on the verge of tears. "But if you and I did that, if we crossed that line, we'd only end up hurting good people, people that we care about—just so we could start something that would never work out anyway. It's better this way, Lee." She paused and looked at him soundly, glimpsing the doubt on _his_ face. "But you still don't believe that, do you?"

"No." He sighed, picking up her half empty glass and downing the remnants. "I do."

**Dream**

She didn't know where she was, or why she was there.

There were many things that were unclear to her, but only two things that she knew for certain.

She knew that she felt happy. For the first time in her life, she felt free, and secure, and loved. And she knew the man who was there with her, making her feel that way.

She'd lay in his arms, her back resting against his strong chest. And they'd look up at the sky.

At first, all they could see were stars. And they were happy there, in the twinkling glow.

But the sun began to come out more and more, and the bright light kept getting stronger, threatening to take it all away from her.

Until one day it finally blinded her. And in a flash, her paradise was gone.

She blinked her eyes and when they finally came open, Cottle stopped shining his light in them. "Welcome back, Captain." He snorted. "We've been worried about you."

She felt a gentle hand stroke her hair, but she almost cried in despair. Because while she recognized and welcomed the touch, it didn't make her feel how she'd felt in her dream.

The Old Man leaned down and kissed her cheek. "Whadya hear, Starbuck?"

She blinked again, the tears that were lodged in her throat making her unable to answer.

The Admiral stepped back and Helo stepped forward, softly clasping her hand in his. "Frak, I missed you." He laughed, kissing her hand. "You gave us quite a scare."

She disentangled her hand from his and covered her eyes with it. His touch wasn't right either.

"Must've been a really good dream, since you didn't seem to want to wake up." Helo stated carefully, growing worried about her. "Wanna tell us about it?"

She shook her head and dropped her hand down.

It was only when she removed everything from her line of sight that her reality finally came into focus. And she saw him clearly, standing over to the side of the room.

His eyes were reserved, not wanting to betray any weakness. But she'd been gazing at his face for every day of her three-week nap, so she could recognize the relief that shone in them.

"She's got a lot to adjust to." Lee spoke up, walking to her bed. "Let's give her some time to rest, she can tell us about her dream later."

When his fingers lightly brushed her arm, she nearly cried with happiness at the warmth that flooded through her at his touch. And for the first time, she understood that dreams really can become reality.

She grabbed his fingers before he pulled away. His eyes widened in surprise, but he twined them with hers.

"I'll tell you about my dream now." She whispered softly, smiling at him. "If you really want to hear about it."

**Envy**

Lee could never really get a firm grasp on what he felt when he saw Helo and Sharon together.

It was always many different—oftentimes conflicting—sentiments swirled together into an unidentifiable jumble of emotion.

It had evolved as his acceptance of the Cylon went from forced to willing. And it had changed from rage to disgust, disgust to confusion, confusion to bafflement, and bafflement to wonder.

But it wasn't until he saw Sharon run into Helo's waiting arms, these two people who had overcome so many obstacles to be with the one they loved, that the emotion finally became clear.

He looked to Kara, purposefullly avoiding him on the other side of the deck, and truly understood what he always felt when he looked at Helo and Sharon.

Envy.

**Fight**

Cally always stayed an entertained, but silent, spectator as she watched the screaming throw-downs that peppered Starbuck and Apollo's relationship.

Over the years, she had witnessed most of their quarrels. And while she examined each one closely, logging every shout and shove into its proper, specially created, Starbuck-and-Apollo category, she never commented. She just shook her head in amusement and went back to work.

Gradually though, she began to notice a shift in the dynamic. Apollo's eyes began to smolder with something other than anger when he called her a "childish, reckless attention-whore". And the curve in Starbuck's mouth when she shouted that he was an "overbearing, passive-aggressive jackass" could no longer be identified as a sneer.

Finally, after the fifth time she saw Apollo drag Starbuck off the deck and disappear for hours, she turned to speak to her husband.

"Galen, why don't we fight more often?"

**Gone**

Lee stood up from his chair when he saw his father exit the President's quarters. He was about to ask how she was when he saw his father's hand linger on the curtain even after he'd pulled it closed, so he stayed silent, already knowing the answer to that question.

After a moment, the Admiral turned to him, desolation etched on his already haggard face.

"She's gone, Lee."

Lee walked to him, clasped his shoulder and let out a long exhale. "Tell me what I can do."

Adama returned the gesture and smiled sadly, weakly. "You can go find Kara."

Lee's eyes widened in shock and he stuttered. "Why do you need Kara?"

"_I_ don't. This isn't for me." The Admiral corrected, looking back at the other room. "The only woman I needed is now gone forever." He turned back to his son and closed his eyes. "Don't let the same thing happen to you."

**Haunted**

Kara had haunted him since the moment he met her. Haunted not only his dreams, but his waking world as well.

She was always there, somewhere in the background. And she was always reminding him of what he couldn't have.

Couldn't have because she was his brother's, couldn't have because she was her own and no one else's, couldn't have because the pull was so strong between them that it would have torn everything else apart.

Even after they had closed the door between them, when she had removed herself from his life and he had moved on to someone else, she was always with him.

And try as he might, he could still never get rid of her. But now, she was always reminding him of where he was supposed to be.

"Was what I did to you really _that_ bad?" She had screamed at him one night while he was having dinner. "That you would leave me down there to rot on that frakking hellhole of a planet! You _know_ what they're going to do to me, Lee!"

"I'm sorry." He had whispered in shame and despair, staring at her as she sat next to him.

"Sorry about what, sweetheart?" Dee had asked from across the table, unaware of the other presence in the room.

He shook his head. "Nothing." He muttered under his breath. He turned to his wife and smiled weakly at her. "Could you pass me some more potatoes?"

**Irrational/ Immature/ Irresponsible/Insubordinate**

President Roslin had to stifle her amusement as she sat on the sofa in her office and watched Major Apollo wear a path on her carpet as he paced back and forth.

"I have absolutely HAD IT with her!" He shouted, his hands trembling and the breath hissing from between his teeth. "I can't believe I've lasted this long without strangling her with my bare hands."

"Major," The President began. "Perhaps if the two of you could just sit down and talk—."

"Are you kidding me?" He cut her off harshly. "There is NO way to talk to someone like that! She's irrational, immature, irresponsible and insubordinate! I don't think I could even stand to be in the same room with her!"

He began pacing again, this time on the other side of the room, and Roslin turned to the person who had been sitting next to her the entire time.

She smirked. "How long has he been in love with her?"

The Admiral chuckled and took a sip of his drink. "For years and years now."

**Justification**

He had a list of justifications that he gave to Dee to account for the time he spent with Starbuck. And they were all real.

He wasn't doing anything wrong.

He had a job to do, and sometimes that job required that he work closely with his fellow officers, even the ones that he had had a long and infamous history with. His wife was a reasonable woman, she understood that.

Still, so that she wouldn't feel threatened or insecure, he thought long and hard about the justifications he gave for being away from her.

He did admit that he was using them more and more these days. But that was okay, their job was growing more and more difficult, and the increasing time he spent with Starbuck was necessary.

He still wasn't doing anything wrong.

But when he found himself using the list of justifications to get out of a two-day pass on the Rising Star with Dee so that he could spend 16 hours wallowing in grease and sweat on the flight deck with Starbuck, he realized that he _was_ doing something wrong.

He was just doing it for the right reasons.

**Kiss**

It felt so completely right, standing in the sweltering supply room, holding each other as though letting go would end their lives.

No words had been spoken before it happened. It wasn't the result of a tempestuous argument, or the product of a tender declaration of love. It was just something that they had both wanted to do for so long, and could no longer keep themselves from doing.

Their lips met, then their hands had twined, then he wrapped himself around her and she melted into him when they both realized that for the first time in their lives, someone else would keep them from falling.

They couldn't even remember what happened after that, they just knew that they were now connected in every way, shape and form. And they could never go back.

He pulled back from her slowly, in no rush to become separate again, even though the pounding on the other side of the door was growing louder and more insistent.

"Starbuck? Apollo?" They heard the Chief's voice shout through. "Hey! You guys okay in there?"

He touched her forehead with his own and she felt his soft breath dance across her face. "We are in so much frakking trouble."

She placed her hand on his heart, feeling it practically beat through his chest. "In more ways than one."

**Love/Live/Life**

"So that's it, Lee?" She leaned against the closed hatch of his office and wiped the blood off her lip. "_I'm _the one that broke you? That made you the bitter, angry shell of a man that you are now?"

He flexed his hand and examined the tears and cuts on his knuckles. "Who else could do that to me but you, Kara?"

"Gods," She laughed in disgust of both him and herself. "I would love to live your life, Apollo. Where everything that went wrong in it was someone else's fault…….." She looked away from him, the exhausted tears falling down her face. "……instead of my own."

**Memory**

She had just about had enough of him. She had given him free reign to hate her, to make her life miserable since her return. After all, she deserved the punishment, and he had earned the right to be the one to dole it out.

But her passivity had limits, and he had surpassed them. So she found herself marching to the showers with a single minded determination.

She walked in and saw him with his head under the spray, his eyes closed and his hands braced against the tiled walls.

"GET OUT." She hissed at everyone else in the room.

They all froze in terror as they looked at each other, but it took them only a few seconds to vacate the room, closing the hatch behind them.

"This is it, Apollo. It's just you and me." She seethed once they were alone, barely able to breathe as the fury flowed through her. "And I only have one question for you!"

He didn't step out from under the water, just answered casually. "Yeah, what's that?"

"If you could erase every memory that you _ever_ had of me," She began, her voice trembling. "Bad……and _good_, would you do it?"

He turned off the water and looked at her, but didn't hesitate. He had asked himself the same question over and over.

"No." He answered softly. "I wouldn't."

She bit her lip and choked back a sob. "Then stop acting like a frakking child and cut me some slack, asshole."

**Naked**

She had been naked in front of many men.

Sometimes it had been provocative, in the midst of seduction. Sometimes it had been teasing, to see how far she could push them. And sometimes it had been convenient, in the bunkroom or the showers, because she had been too rushed or too tired to bother to be modest.

She had never cared if any of the men had found her attractive. Most of them did, but that didn't matter to her. She was never uneasy about her nakedness, she was who she was, take it or leave it.

But now, standing in front of Lee with her heart wide open, she realized that while she was fully clothed, she had never been this naked before.

And it was the only time she prayed that anyone liked what they saw.

**Omission **

He had sucked in a nervous breath when the President asked him to have dinner with her and his father, but that nervousness had slipped into relief when she answered his question about whether anyone else would be there.

"I'm sure a few people from my staff will be interrupting incessantly," She had laughed. "But other than that……I'm not planning on anyone else." She had smiled sweetly, comfortingly. "It would be nice if we could all get to know each other again, after what happened to us over this last year."

Lee made his way over to Colonial One later that day, and the fact that the Admiral had caught a much earlier Raptor showed him that his father and the President were already on their way to becoming very well-reacquainted.

He walked to the President's office with a carefree heart and a bottle of wine in his hands. He smiled when she pulled back the curtain and greeted him warmly, but the smile dropped instantaneously when he saw a familiar blonde sitting next to his father.

Kara stood up as well when she saw him walk through the hatch. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the Admiral accusingly. "What the hell is this?"

The Admiral's eyes twinkled and he just shrugged.

Roslin smirked conspiratorially at the Admiral. "Oh, did we forget to mention to them that the other one would be here?"

"Well, we _are_ getting old, Madam President." He smirked back.

Roslin gleamed at Starbuck and Apollo, silently ordering them to sit down and shut up. "Must have slipped our minds."

**Plea**

They had tacitly agreed that love and happy-endings had no place in their relationship. And every time they met like this, they convinced themselves that it was only about release. This wasn't about anything other than letting out some of their mutual fervent emotions before everything around them burnt to a cinder.

Their plan had worked for a while, and for the first few days they both thought that they might get this out of their systems.

Kara had prized the bruises he gave to her, and Lee had worn the scratches down his back like a badge of honor. The wounds meant that they had at least touched each other.

And they found that the rage and resentment that passed between them during their encounters was easy and reassuring, since it meant they never had to go any deeper.

But the fifth time he was inside of her, pinning her hard against the metal wall of his office, he heard her softly breathe his name, and he knew that he had been lying to himself.

He wanted to go deeper. He didn't want her anger, he just wanted _her_.

So he released the hold his teeth had on her shoulder, and tenderly kissed it instead. She stilled against him, and he felt her hands go slack underneath his shirt, her nails no longer digging into his back. His hand traveled up from his death-grip on her thigh, gently cupping her face, and he pulled back to look at her.

She shook her head numbly. "What are you doing?"

"Kara." He whispered her name and brushed a damp strand of hair back from her forehead.

"No." She whimpered, her eyes glinting with fear at this tender display. "What are you doing? Stop!"

"I'm trying to." He answered softly, his heart rising up in his throat, his face showing her everything he felt. "I'm trying to stop this."

Her whole world fell apart when she saw what he laid open before her, and she tried to push him off.

But he held firm and instead grabbed the hand that was trying to punch him, kissing her fingers. "I can't do this. I don't hate you, Kara…….I love—."

"NO." She screamed in his face, trembling all the while. "You hate me! You have to hate me."

She began to weep, and her despair was too heavy for him to carry anymore, so he slid them both to the floor, wrapping her in his arms.

She was still weakly trying to hurt him, her hands limply flinging against his chest before her fingers finally clenched in the fabric of his shirt. She buried her face in the curve of his neck and he could feel the sobs shake her entire body. "Please, please……_please_ hate me."

**Quasi-**

His whole life, he had wanted completion, consistency. He had wanted absolutes.

But he had never gotten that from her. There had never been a point in their relationship that been certain, where he had known exactly where they stood without any doubt.

They were quasi-family, quasi-friends, quasi-lovers, quasi-enemies.

He could have had absolutes at anytime; with Gianne, with Dee. But he could never quite make those relationships work, so they must not have been so absolute after all.

He always kept coming back to the quasi-. That was the only constant in his life.

And the only time he ever found completion was when he embraced it, and stopped trying to make it something that it wasn't.

When he did that, the quasi- became everything that he would ever need.

He walked into their quarters one day to find clothes flung everywhere and an angry note from her about "_getting the frakking diapers when I frakking asked you to so that I wouldn't have to get up in the frakking middle of the night to do it myself_!" resting on the table.

He found her asleep on their bed, a flight book laid open beside her and their five month old son sleeping on top of her, and as he gently placed a blanket over the both of them, he knew that quasi-dysfunction was absolute perfection.

**Revelation**

She found him in the empty briefing room, going over the flight log of the latest CAP. She didn't make a sound until he noticed her and looked up into her face. Even then, she wasn't sure that she should tell him what she needed to say.

His lips tried to form words, tried to muster the energy to say something spiteful, but instead he just gave up and nodded to the seat next to him.

She sat down, quiet for a while. "I _do _want to die."

He dropped his chin down to chest upon hearing her words.

"Tell me that you don't care." She whispered in agony. "Tell me that you'd be relieved, _glad_ even. Tell me that everyone would be better off, that I'd be doing everyone a favor." She paused and blew out a puff of air. "Tell me that you'd finally forgive me."

He shook his head. "I'd be miserable, everyone would be lost, and I'd _never _forgive you. As a matter of fact, I'd hate you for the rest of my life."

A tear escaped her eye. "No more than you already do."

"No, Kara. I wish I could hate you. It would make this so much easier." He looked down to his log again. "But the only way I could really hate you, pure hatred, is if you weren't here anymore."

**Swear**

As she laid underneath him for the fourth time that night, and felt him move with her, against her, inside her, she stopped biting her lip and moaned the words that she'd been dying to scream for years.

"Gods, I love you, I love you, I love you." She ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the top of his head as he traced her collarbone with his tongue. "I swear I do, I do, I do, I do."

**Tired**

He joined her where she sat overlooking the flight deck and let his legs mimic hers, dangling off the sides of the metal overhang.

He had meant to apologize for the way he had screamed at her earlier, but instead of an apology, something else tumbled from his lips.

"What we had has been broken, Kara. We've both hurt each other in a way that I didn't think was possible. Not for two people that had what we once had."

She looked at him in surprise, but nodded in agreement.

"But I'm just so tired of being pissed at you. And we have to work together; we have to be in each other's lives. If only for logistical purposes, there's no way around that fact." He looked to his hands that were resting in his lap. "So we have to try and rebuild this."

Again she nodded.

"There's a process: a series of steps that we have to take in order to begin to trust each other again. And it's very time-consuming and volatile; we skip one step, or move too fast or too slow, and the whole thing could implode, and we'd be back where we started….. if not even further behind. And even then, even with all this work, there's still no guarantee that we can be what we once were."

She lightly touched his hand. "I'm still willing to do it." She whispered. "I'm still willing to go through that, if it means that we can—."

He cut her off. "But you see…… I'm _not_." He paused when he noticed her defeated expression. "I can't do it, Kara. I'm just too frakking tired to go through all that."

She looked away from him, but he could still see her resignation in the way her whole body slumped.

He spoke carefully, praying that she wouldn't decimate him again. "So let's just call this a do-over, okay?"

She jerked at his words and turned back to him, hope shining on her face.

He laughed nervously. "Because I can't wait that long, and the one thing I need most in the world is for you to be my best friend again."

**Undertaking**

Helo patted Lee on the back as they stood at the bar on the Rising Star. "You've signed on for quite an undertaking, Apollo." He laughed. "You sure you're up for it?"

Lee laughed too and looked back into the ballroom, at the table where Kara and Sharon sat talking to each other. "The guy with a Cylon wife is trying to warn _me_ about the stresses of marriage…….I'd never thought I'd live to see the day."

"Normally I wouldn't." Helo winked, grabbing Sharon's drink and making his way back to her. "But between Starbuck and a Cylon, I think I might have gotten the better deal."

**Vow**

They stood in the chapel with only the Admiral and the President as their witnesses, the two older people barely able to stand still as they beamed at the young couple.

"Major Adama," The priest began. "If you want this woman, take her hand in yours."

Lee took her hand and she smiled at him, contented and serene. It made his heart leap to be the first and only one who had ever made her feel that way.

"Now state your vow……to her, and before the gods and your loved ones."

"Kara," He started, taking a breath. "I vow to never let you off the hook for anything ever again."

She dissolved into a fit of laughter and fell against his chest.

He continued, chuckling also. "And since the only way I can manage that is to marry you," He nudged her face up and kissed her softly. "I guess I'll have to make that sacrifice."

**Win**

"I'm just saying, you have your way of looking at things, and I have mine."

Lee groaned at her stubbornness. "It's not a matter of perspective, Kara. And I get the feeling that you're disagreeing with me purely out of principle."

"Why would I do that?" She stood up and kissed his cheek. "That's ridiculous."

"Oh, really?" He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into his lap. "It's like I'm saying that the ceiling is above us, and the floor is below us, but you're still disagreeing with me!"

"Why are you getting so worked up about this?" She chuckled, lightly scratching her fingers against his scalp. "It's just a silly argument."

"It's _not_ just a silly argument," He corrected. "It's an argument about your fundamental inability to let me win."

"I let you win all the time." She whispered, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth.

"Really?" He snorted. "When was the last time you let me win?"

She batted her eyelashes at him. "If I remember correctly, you got to win last night." She purred softly and licked her lips. "Several times."

**X-rated**

The often-isolated and hard-working miners on the Daru Mozu had once been praised as having the dirtiest minds in all of what was left of existence.

But when Major Lee Adama spent a two-week special assignment onboard the ship to oversee the new refining techniques, the miners unanimously agreed that that honor should be transferred to his lovely wife.

It seemed that by the sixth day of his absence, Captain Thrace sorely missed her husband, and they noticed that the nightly calls he received from Galactica were beginning to leave him flushed and exhausted, but wearing a huge smile when he left the communications room.

Curiosity finally got the better of them on the tenth day, and they paid the com officer twenty cubits to switch the Major's call onto an open channel and play it over the speakers.

Never in a million years, never in a million lifetimes, could those grizzled, raunchy men have ever thought of some of the things that came from Major Apollo's wife's mouth when she thought no one else was listening.

At the end of his stay, when she piloted a Raptor over to the ship to pick him up, he did the polite thing and introduced her to his temporary shipmates.

The striking blonde smiled sweetly and waved at all of them. They all turned bright red and couldn't even look her in the eye.

**Year**

He thought that a year would be enough time to get over what she had done to him.

Turned out he was wrong.

He thought that a year of stewing in his own anger and resentment would be enough to wipe out any residual love he had for her.

Turned out he was wrong.

**Zephyr**

He honestly believed that after everything they'd been through, it would take an act of the gods to get him to begin to forgive her.

But in the end, it wasn't a booming voice or a bright light from the heavens.

Instead, it was just a gentle smile that she gave him after they returned from a particularly dangerous CAP. The nostalgic sight blew through his heart like a warm breeze, melting the ice that had lived in there for so long.

Climbing out of his cockpit, he found her waiting for him at the foot of his ladder, and she playfully shoved his shoulder. "Thanks for saving my ass yet again, Apollo."

He grinned back. "Everyone has a skill, Starbuck."

**The End**


End file.
